Now this is a laugh. As Vanity Fair reports, the House GOP leadership’s symbolic gesture of reading the Constitution on the House floor today — in an effort to please their Tea Party base who decry virtually all of the Obama administration’s policies as both a monumental waste of money and, more importantly, an affront to our founding document — could also itself cost a lot of money.
The magazine asked an expert on government waste, and he said in part:
The amount I get is nearly $1.1 million. $1,071,872.87, to be exact, though of course this is more back-of-the-envelope than exact. When one chamber of Congress is in session but not working, we the people still have to pay for members’ salaries and expenses, and for their police protection, and for keeping their lights and phones and coffee machines on. Even Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) combined don’t blow enough hot air to heat the Capitol in January.
Wow, that sure does sound wasteful. If only the citizens of this country could get mobilized to oppose it — maybe by holding massive rallies to decry it as being unconstitutional government waste. Who knows, perhaps they could even co-opt some massive action from Revolutionary days to be their symbol.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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